Janine Cross

Dragon Temple Saga — (2005-2007) This trilogy is complete. Publisher: On a large dragon estate in Malacar, young Zarq Darquel's rebellious ways go unnoticed by the watchful eye of the Dragon Temple-until she accidentally captures the attention of an eccentric and dangerous dragonmaster and unleashes a storm of tragedy. Zarq and her delirious half-breed mother flee through the underworld of their land-from The Zone of the Dead to a sanctuary for outcast dragons, through discovery and persecution. Consumed with the desire for revenge, Zarq develops a taste for the highly addictive venom drawn from the dragons she has been taught to revere, and sinks into a realm of bizarre magics. Here, influenced by the divine grace of dragon memories, Zarq glimpses possibilities of revenge and social revolution; but to achieve such, she must defy not just the sexual taboos and patriarchal conventions of her society, but the Emperor who rules her nation.

Touched by Venom: Touched by Horror

I've been tempted by Touched by Venom for a long time. The cover art is sensual; the blurb is intriguing and contains a promising quote by Jacqueline Carey, one of my favorite authors. Something held me off, though, until recently, but I finally broke down and bought Touched by Venom used.

First of all... yowza. I thought I was into dark fantasy. Little did I know, compared to Touched by Venom, pretty much everything I've ever read is all rainbows and unicorns. This is definitely not a book for the faint of heart. Janine Cross doesn't shy away from the grit of a peasant's life (brutality, disease, excrement...) or from the scourges of racism, sexism, and classism. Our heroine, Zarq, is on the wrong end of all three of these bigotries and so her life is difficult in the extreme. Readers may be particularly disturbed by the inclusion of female circumcision in Touched by Venom. There is also bestiality in this novel.

I'm not going to bash Cross for including atrocities in her novel; after all, with the obvious exception of dragon bestiality, all of these horrors have occurred in humanity's past, and many are still occurring today. I do think the story would have been better had it included any sort of brightness, any sort of tenderness between the characters, anything to break up the relentless parade of brutality. Some reviews have compared Touched by Venom to Anne Bishop's Black Jewels series. I disagree; Black Jewels had humor, romance, and friendship. If this is similar to any of Bishop's work, it's her Match Girl short story, which focused on the tortures inflicted on suspected witches during the "Burning Times."

I also believe that Touched by Venom could have been paced better and/or the heroine made more dynamic. Zarq spends the first half of the novel as a small child; all of her decisions are made for her by others. Even after she grows to late adolescence, Zarq seldom makes a choice of her own, instead being buffeted along by the will of others. It's only after page 300 that she really starts acting of her own volition (the book is less than 400 pages long, by the way). And even when she does, she does it in such a thoughtless way and makes such a botch of it that I don't have much sympathy for her.

It may be "realistic" that a society as oppressive as this one would produce citizens as passive as Zarq. However, that doesn't necessarily make for the best story. Fantasy works best, in my opinion, when the main character has spirit and courage beyond the ordinary. The character doesn't have to be perfect — in fact, it's often more compelling when s/he's a flawed person with a humble background — but s/he needs to be the kind of person who writes his or her own destiny.

I've heard that Zarq begins to defy the powers-that-be in the two sequels to Touched by Venom. Unfortunately, this book doesn't exactly inspire me to reach for the others. I may end up giving them a try eventually, as Cross is a competent writer, but for now, I think I'm going to take my leave of Zarq Darquel. —Kelly Lasiter

Touched by Venom

The premise of Touched by Venom seemed interesting enough to me that I told myself I would ignore the ridiculous names in the blurb on the back (Zarq Darquel?! Zarq? Seriously? And Waivia?) and give the story a fair chance.

Ohhh, how I wish I'd followed my first instinct. I soon found myself inundated with more silly words than you can shake a stick at. In Janine Cross' world you can't swing a dead cat without hitting a goofy made up word or painfully absurd name. The first thing I learn is that a danku rishi via is a peasant potter's daughter. It should come as no surprise to anyone that I didn't really care. As I read on, these things came pouring down on my head. Rishi kus are serf guild clans; Ranon ki Cinai is the Temple of the Dragon; the Temple's holy overseer is a Ranreeb; the cinai komikon is the dragonmaster; and so on, and so forth. Almost every time I see these words, they're accompanied with a translation for the benefit of the reader, so that Cross' writing begins to look like that of an anime fan newbie writing fanfiction. You know: "Ohayo, minna-san! Good morning everyone! Today is the first day of school and I am your sensei, your teacher." (Rishi, by the way, is a word, but it has nothing to do with serfs and so I kind of doubt that Cross used it on purpose.)

The names are no better. Zarq (who is named after a legendary male hero in Cross' world) and Waivia are mild in comparison to some of what you'll see. All the characters are named like the most ridiculous racehorses ever. Except instead of something like Starstepper's Bravery (or something to that effect, anyway) you get: Yeli's Dono, Big Grum Grum's Li, Kobo's Dash, Korshan's Limia and... and... Car Manopu's Wasaltooltic! And since Cross insists on calling these characters by their full names every single time, you will read the words Car Manopu's Wasaltooltic so many times in a short period that you will be ready to gouge your eyes out. On the list of things that drive people away from the fantasy genre? Ridiculous names.

As I'm making my way through the book with fast fading patience, I find myself blinking in astonishment at some of the customs these characters practice. On a holy day called Sa Gikiro (a name so absurd that even Waivia makes fun of it, calling it Soggy Carrot Day — you know it's bad when your own characters think your made up words are a joke) the people go to the temple. Before entering the temple they — stay with me now — they walk around the temple. Anyone born in the dry season circles east to west. Anyone born in the wet season circles west to east. Anyone born in between those season walks east to west, but they must walk backwards. And everyone swears a lot, even the women (who, in Cross' oppressive world, are not normally allowed to), supposedly to protect their clan's bull dragon from evil spirits. Even if some culture somewhere did or has done such a thing, it wouldn't look less ridiculous on paper.

So what about the plot? Well, here's part of what the blurb on the back says: "Like her half-breed mother, young Zarq Darquel can't always hold her tongue. A lowly peasant on a large dragon estate, she goes unnoticed by the Temple of the Dragon — until she accidentally captures the attention of an eccentric and dangerous dragonmaster, unleashing a storm of tragedy. Her clan is plunged into destitution, her beautiful sister, Waivia, sold into slavery, and her mother lost to madness."

Except that that doesn't happen. Oh, fair enough, the "storm of tragedy" happens. Not, however, because Zarq "can't always hold her tongue" or because she "accidentally captures the attention of an eccentric and dangerous dragonmaster." Zarq, like 99.9% of the women in Janine Cross' world, has little trouble holding her tongue or doing anything else that the men dictate she must. She captures the attention of said dragonmaster for about all of a minute. It's actually the actions of Yeli's Dono that causes these tragic events, and he doesn't make a reappearance in what I've read of the book. Perhaps the publishing company was trying to make Zarq sound interesting, or maybe they were trying to make her look like the spirited outcast in a highly oppressive world — which fails, because like all the other women, Zarq plods along beneath the yoke of oppression without much fuss or even much apparent desire to change her situation.

After this I found myself plunged... into a world of tedium, of starvation, of picking nuts, of snot, blood, piss, pus, and any other bodily secretion you can thing of. I blink in astonishment again as Zarq and the women of her clan make money from piss jewelry. No, really... pissing on a certain kind of vine makes it curl up in a way that, when glazed, makes lovely jewelry. Jewelry that their fellow serfs go wild for. I also found myself completely unmoved by the plight of these characters. The abuse, the starvation, the oppression of the Temple (I didn't make it as far as the genital mutilation). What is it with some writers? Why do they think that throwing in numerous big, serious issues is equal to "I r seriouz riter"? It isn't. All it equals is "I r big pain in Beth's butt."

Janine Cross can, on occasion, paint some startlingly vivid pictures with her prose. Unfortunately her world is so drained of color, so sapped of any hope or any of the small joys, the hard won triumphs. Not a single character displays the determination for change that can be found even among the worst off of us. I toiled around in the tedium for about half a book, but it was going nowhere at such a clip that I just couldn't take it anymore. One of the best fantasy books of 2005? Feh. Not even close. —Beth Johnson